Edward Said Books & Reviews

Uncomfortable, but Invaluable

Urban's is not a happy memoir. The subtitle, My War Within the Cold War, sums up his theme. The new policy involved years of often bitter struggle with both grotesque reactionaries and Western appeasers.

The Other France

 Modernizing the Provincial City does not tell us anything we did not already know about how the French became and are becoming what they have been and are.

Acheson, Simply Put

Chace's Acheson is encompassing, graceful and prodigiously researched and annotated.

Crazy over Cuba

As this important volume demonstrates,  the overriding requirement of the era was not guts but wisdom. On that score, the Kennedys and their lieutenants flunked.

The Cult of Secrecy

Senator Moynihan has expanded his appendix to the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy report into an elegant, quotable, scholarly, and timely book.

Globalism and the American Tide

In this new book, Cairncross is a little breathless about the electronic communications that will conjure new worlds into existence. Nevertheless, because her text is well informed and her prose lucid, and because the technological developments ar

Strong State, Weaker Theory

A group of five Americans gathered in Paris a century ago to negotiate an end to the Spanish-American War.

Bearish on Teddy

Brands deserves congratulation on his new biography, an honest, enjoyable, sympathetic portrait of our twenty-sixth president, aside from a melodramatic prologue and some unfortunate bows to modern psychology.

Loose Cannon

Whereas the principal aim of American nuclear policy during the Cold War was to deter a strong and aggressive Soviet Union, the nuclear risks we face today stem from Russian weakness.

Getting It Off Pat

Pat Buchanan will not go away; he is confident that economic nationalism will capture one or both major parties. In fact, he believes the tide has already turned, as demonstrated by the refusal of Congress to grant President Clinton "fast track" a

Follow The National Interest

May 26, 2012